After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

Search Result (1471)

RelevanceDateRelease Date
This heavily redacted cable seems to describe a proposal for "turning up the heat" in the interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah. One unredacted sentence references moving onto "Option B" in the interrogation; another reveals the psychologists' ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This heavily redacted message describes one instance (starting on August 4, 2002) of "the aggressive phase" of high value captive interrogation and recommends its use as a template for future interrogation. Nothing new has been disclosed since ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
ALEC Info Director
EIT
This heavily redacted paper "discusses the techniques and strategies for resisting interrogation described in captured al-Qa'ida training manuals and other documents. It suggests methods for recognizing when sophisticated resistance to ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo, Cable
Abu Zubaydah
EIT
This memo discusses the importance of the High Value Terrorist Detainee Program in preventing future terrorist attacks, specifically the information that has been gleaned from terrorist detainees.
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Bin al Shibh
This memo describes the CIA's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, including the legal authorities under which the program operates and the safeguards and controls that have been undertaken to prevent deviation, improvisation, abuse ...
This memo sets forth the reasons why the CIA granted Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates (MJA) a "sole source contract" to support the Counterterrorism Center's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, and describes the type of support that ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell
This memo sets forth the reasons why the CIA granted Mitchell, Jessen, and Associates (MJA) a "sole source contract" to support the Counterterrorism Center's rendition, detention, and interrogation program, and describes the type of support that ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
Bruce Jessen, James Mitchell
This November 27, 2007 memo justifies the future use of contractors as High Value Detainee Interrogators (HVDI). The memo states that before September 11, 2001 the CIA had no resident expertise in interrogation and therefore contract ...
This memo describes the "key" role that contract interrogators/debriefers play in the CIA's Rendition and Detention Program. The memo states that before September 11, 2001 the CIA had no resident expertise in interrogation, and so they sought ...
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
EIT, SERE
This February 1, 2003 memo from James Mitchell sets forth his relevant experience and qualifications for providing "psychological consultation to interrogation programs".
Dec. 20, 2016
Non-legal Memo
James Mitchell
James Mitchell